


Let Me in the Wall

by thenopetrain



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2332430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenopetrain/pseuds/thenopetrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both too guarded for their own good, but not as guarded as they think they are. The longer they spend time together, the more their walls crumble; the more vulnerable they become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dust to Dust (part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing of The Blacklist. If I did, I wouldn't be obsessing over all the secrets in this show. All the lyrics in this fic are from that song 'Dust to Dust' by The Civil Wars.

 

_It's not your eyes_

_It's not what you say_

_It's not your laughter_

_That gives you away_

_You're just lonely_

_You've been lonely, too long_

* * *

 

" _Run."_

He never understood why people would run for fun. He still doesn't. In his life, the only time he ever ran was because something was hunting him, or he it.  _Death. Safety. Victory. Love. A second chance._

Run for fun...

How about run, so this soldier doesn't kill you? Run after that person so mercy won't come back to haunt you later. Run because hell is raining down on you. Run or the love of your life will get away. Run so your three-year old daughter won't fall down the stairs. Run because your family is waiting for you. Run because they think you did it. Run into the burning house; Run away from it. Run to the dream of your wife's arms. Run to home, to bed, to church, to a safe place. Then, run away from all those lovely, vulnerable things.

Run for your life.

Run.

But they didn't get to. The glass had long since shattered. Bullets stopped punching their way into the safe house. There were two waves. Despite his callings-out, Lizzie hadn't stirred. She just breathed as the initial assault became the second; wild shots, warning shots, damaging shots, shots to take out any other occupants in the house. They were all the same.  _Dembe._

He hadn't been able to breathe very well when they dragged him out. He hadn't fought hard enough, couldn't make his right arm cooperate with his desperate need to get Berlin's hands off of  _her._

They'd taken them two days ago.

Sessions had been sporadic.

Beatings.

Lizzie's screams.

Images of her.

Medical attention: they don't want him to die yet.

Finally, there was just the cell and the aching and the tricks.

* * *

 

_Oh, you're acting your thin disguise_

_All your perfectly delivered lines_

_They don't fool me_

_You've been lonely, too long_

* * *

 

"Do you have an escape plan, yet?"

Her voice is taut and strained from the opposite corner of their cell.

Hours had passed since they threw him back in here. Dread, regret, and longing sat tidy in the center of the floor.

Six-sided

Wrapped like Christmas

Tied off with a red bow

Someone tried to get creative

He'd opened it, of course. Handled it like a grenade about to go off; hands shaking, breath non-existent, suffocating on the fear. He found the bracelet she'd been wearing since the day Berlin crashed into their lives. A token of victory and hope made perverse by the man set to ruin him.

He had known what was coming next. Felt it draw closer and closer until the second gift arrived and his heart lurched up into his throat. There were very few things that could make him puke the way that box did. He left the gift where it had appeared, and after his body was done rebelling, he'd retreated to where he sat now; squeezing the life out of the little figures on the bracelet as if he could make them apart of his flesh.

 _They have her, Sir._  The words that brought all of this mess into her life were the same ones that taunted him now. They have her. All of her. Pieces of her. And the first of those pieces sat leering at him; the perfect revenge.

All that had transpired since he'd dragged himself away was silence and bleeding. He was wasting away in to the wall at his back; becoming neither stone, nor inheriting any kind of impenetrable quality.  _She_  stayed in her corner, breathing and trembling and quiet enough to be dead.  _He_  dissolved into the nothing he knew he'd become. He figures he stared to long into the dark, because the dark had certainly stared longer into him.

The small box that sat on the floor between them sent nausea into his stomach with the occasional lurch. Oh, he wouldn't be sick again, wasn't strong enough, but the feeling would stay and stay and stay. His muscles would quake from time to time as he tried to hold himself together. There was not a word for what he felt. It was nothing like the horror he remembers feeling when he found his home bloodied and abandoned and everything like the time in Budapest when a vibrant but deranged client tried to saw him in half with her butter knife.

But Lizzie…she would not move. She would not touch him or come to his aid. Nor, would she let him come to hers. The small box was a barrier, an awful, agonizing barrier.

"No." He didn't have an escape plan. Why would he? She wasn't  _real_  after all. She was a dream. A fantastic dream. He knew he wasn't getting out of this one. He knew...he knew that he was slipping into a foggy stage of delirium. Knew that he was slowly bleeding his way into the cement at his back. Knew that breathing was becoming harder, that his vision wavered in and out and in and out.

His consciousness was much like the times he found himself floating out at sea. So many of his stories happened amid perilous surges of water. It's both poetic and cruel that life has led him, repeatedly, to one shore or another; life, death, the sordid land in between the two where he felt neither mortal nor eternal. Where every action had more than one cause and the ripples were too many to count. Those were the waves he lost himself to now as he watches her shift in the shadows and draw nearer.

He didn't want to look at her. Shame and defeat, guilt and agony, tore into him with each step she sent echoing between the walls. He had learned a long time ago to avoid that which seemed too devastating. So often had he reminded himself of how vulnerable he'd been that it became an obsessive need to prevent anything from breaching the interior he had built his vault around. They could make him bleed. Wrench his heart in half and beat it into the dust, but this thing he lived in...this scarred, burned, shot-up vessel was only another layer to the walls around his soul and mind.

The memory of Guantanamo, the first time he saw it, comes to mind; but it is the inverted and distended version. All that appeared salvageable, righteous, and true was locked away; left under the heavy security of the world's underbelly.  _The Concierge of Crime_. What good did all those names do him now, what use was a mind full of the lives of everyone he's ever met, when the phantom of the last good thing in his life was stepping out of the shadows to stand before him?

His eyes hover near her boots, travel up to her calf, and notice the dust clinging to her pant leg where she'd been resting it against the floor. Funny, how his imagination added that minute detail. His eyes stutter over everything else and freeze on the stub that juts out a little from her elbow.

She stands so casually, as if she's ignorant to the fact that this is a scene to topple the strength he has left; half in the dark, half in the light.  _You did this to her, Red._  The drip...drip...drip of blood smacking the ground near her feet is a special kind of torture that riddles his soul with a million unbearable wounds. No matter the bullet that struck him, the ribs that are broken, and the bruises he's suffered. He'd rather his lungs be on fire than see this.  _You lose._  Those crimson beads flash against the cement and he does his best to avoid them like he avoids the voice in the shadows that surround her.

Reluctant to look at them, they're just faces he sees every now and then when sleep is more tiring than staying awake. But he doesn't want to add her to them yet. Greedy and possessive, his thoughts eat away at the light she'd bathed into his life; the promise and hope of the future she represented unwilling to die out completely.  _I love how the light comes in through the-_

He blinks, wonders how long his eyes were closed, when next he opens them, she's crouched before him. Her eyes are dry and resolute, burning and searching for detail, nothing like the watery stare he expected. She does the most awful thing after that: she touches her fingers to the pulse under the raise of the scar she gave him and he holds his breath.

"It's weak, but it's there." She sounds muddled; her voice deeper, her scowl unfamiliar. Confusion and dizziness washes over him when he tries to get his eyes to focus on her own. "Reddington." Fingers bite into the wound in his chest and a sound claws its way out of his throat.

" _Lizzie_ ," a protest, a warning, an admonition grumbles out of him like a rock rolling down some mossy hill; soft and unstoppable.

"We have her, Dearie." Mr. Kaplan's voice reaches out to him and draws him back. The world gets a little louder, starts to move a little faster, and when he looks up, his longtime savior kneels before him. Business is the face she wears right now, and next to her is the grim face Ressler shows off these days. Less the Boy Scout and more the undercover agent he dealt with in Brussels.

"Not all of her." The two in front of him must share a look because his voice has wavered and cracked too much and the silence spans for too long afterward. There's more noise beyond them.  _His team_. He knows their voices and their methods; the exhalation of silenced bullets and grounded noises of confirmations. He can practically feel their expertise permeate the area as though they were setting him in chains.

Chains to hold him down.

Chains to secure him.

Chains to help him sink into the abyss.

His awareness falters, but a hand on his catches him.

"Keep strong, Dear. We're not out of this yet." Kaplan's fingers seek his pulse again and Ressler is waving someone over. The fist he has around the tiny bracelet tightens. They make quick work of the IV. Someone keeps a steady pressure on the hole in his chest. He doesn't know who, he's closed his eyes again, retreating to that interior no one can touch, but he's fairly certain it's Ressler. Payment for past services rendered. He doubts he'll ever be repaid for killing Audrey's murderer, but they're making leaps and bounds if the agent is working with Kaplan. 

"Targets secured. We gotta go." Red finds himself on his feet faster than he can breathe. The pain throughout his body catches up to him like dynamite set to level a building. His legs crumple underneath him, but there are hands to hold him up, and they're moving.

After an indeterminable amount of time, ambient light from a street lamp makes his eyes water, and then, there are strips of fluorescent bulbs above his head to wash out everything until it's pale and diluted. Spending hours in the din and gloom of the place they held him, Red feels like a blind man.

"Bullet went through. Looks like it clipped his collar bone. Maybe a rib. It's hard to say with the bruising and swelling." Cold air washes over him, wakes his mind a little more, and he wonders when they laid him down and how long ago.  _Semantics,_  he craves them as he begins to discern the people talking. The front of his shirt is open; exposing much of the damage Berlin left in his wake and the ghosts of other painful endeavors. The smack of rubber gloves being adorned makes him flinch and the fuzzy figures around him seem to press in on all sides. An oxygen mask is placed over his face and obstructs the darker figure at his feet.  _Dembe_. There's something crooked to the way the Sudanese man holds himself. The events of that morning come back to him and he wonders where his friend got caught in the ambush.

His eyes move from body to body; searching for one in particular. He is surrounded by eyes and voices and faceless people. Kaplan, he's sure that's her on the right, fiddles with his index finger. A moment or two later, the hollow, mechanical sound of his heartbeat reaches his ears. "Most of the damage seems to be concentrated on the right side. It appears they tried to clot the wound." The vehicle lurches and a hand grabs his ankle.

"You're sure you can fix all this?" There she is, the unfocused body near his head. Hair in a ponytail, a patch of white on her forehead. Dark clothing. Something holds her left arm aloft. He blinks a few times.

"I'm sure. We've done this before." A disapproving sound floats down to him and he thinks he disagrees with Lizzie's assessment of the information given to her. Kaplan and his team will offer him the unfettered security that the FBI can't. She's done this before. Dozens of times. Rescued him from the brink of death and flames and hell. He must be reacting. He must have moved or made a small noise. Or that shrill chirping he has for a heartbeat has caused some alarm, because she's there, leaning down over him and all he can do is breath in the proximity, relish the warmth he imagines he can feel, and marvel up at the sight of her.

"Hey," There's something else in the thumb he feels rubbing the top of his skull where she thinks no one can see, in the tears sitting in her eyes when her face comes into focus, in the tremble of her bottom lip. "It's going to be okay." By the look she gives him next, he knows that's not what she wanted to say. He knows her position beside him is still as uncertain as it has been from day one. That this,  _this moment, right now,_  will forever change the way she looks at him.

He doesn't care. It's her voice… _her voice, so close and real_. It sends itself blissfully throughout his body; a warmth that reminds him of French wine settling in his belly, of the kiss of sunlight after a freezing night, the familiarity of the home he lost so long ago. But there's a stitch in it; unraveling the strength she's trying to show, and it worries its way into the muscles of his left arm. A reserve of energy saved for the action he must take.

When he draws it up toward her, the hand she was soothing him with takes his own. His thumb brushes the raised skin at the base of her palm, and he holds the bracelet between them. Through the mask on his face comes a relieved exhalation; all mercy and thanksgiving and grief.

It's there.

Her arm.

Her scar.

Her.

All of her.

 _Whole_.


	2. Dust to Dust (part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (For disclaimer, see chapter 1)

 

_You've held your head up_

_You've fought the fight_

_You bear the scars_

_You've done your time_

_Listen to me_

_You've been lonely, too long_

* * *

 

" _Run."_

Dembe had said it low and rough in her ear the moment he'd pried her from one of the assailant's arms. She doesn't know how he did it. She doesn't know where he came from. But he seemed to appear, and then they were moving; two shadows bleeding and breathing hard.

Run.

Run away from home. Run to school. Run the obstacle course. Run to Sam. Run or the target will get away. Run or the bomb will detonate. Run or that little girl will die. Run to her husband. Run away from her husband. Run to the safest place she can think of.

Race to the man she needs and hates and  _needs to hate._

Run away to save herself.

Run to live.

Run.

But Red didn't. He was taken. He was tortured. He disappeared. But not all trace had vanished. She'd never stared so intently at the pictures in the War Room as she did that day. She had discovered how all of the Blacklisters had been connected; heralding the oncoming storm that was Berlin. But there was more to it. There had to be. Cooper had told her that Red asked for favors after some of the more innocuous cases. Favors. Clues. Connections. Prizes.

The forty-eight hour mark was closing in on them.

Aram keeps watching her. Bounces ideas off of her.

The skeletal structures from The Alchemist's lab bother her.

The Stewmaker's cabin. The injections. Her screams.

Berlin's story. His daughter. Body parts.

_Just pieces to a much larger puzzle._

"Search Baltimore Missing Persons between the ages of twenty-four to thirty five going back two years."

"Okaaay, who are we looking for?"

"Me."

* * *

 

_Let me in the wall_

_You've built around_

_We can light a match_

_And burn it down_

_Let me hold your hand_

_And dance 'round and 'round the flames_

_In front of us_

_Dust to dust_

* * *

 

Mr. Kaplan doesn't tell her what to do.

Ressler doesn't tell her what to do.

Dembe doesn't tell her what to do.

Mostly, it's because the four of them have become permanent fixtures in the small bedroom Red occupies. So far he's awakened twice; brief moments of clarity that drifted into darkness. Supposedly, the first time was after a very small, very bald, very flustered doctor finished patching him up. He reminded Liz more of a mole rat in glasses, but they barely met because she and Ressler were escorted to the house's foyer while the man saved Red's life. The second time was while they were transporting him to a safer location; a mountain home somewhere in the reaches of New York.

The place almost reminded her of Kornish's cabin, but the front of the house had a wrap-around patio that overlooked a lake and the trees didn't suffocate the property like gravestones. Whoever the friends are that loaned them the place, she hopes they don't come back for a while. If she has to lie low, if she has to play the part she was falling into before four days ago…this place could let her do it in peace.

It could let  _them_  do it in peace. For now, and for as long as it took Red to recover, they were safe. Kaplan assured her it wouldn't be long anyway, and she wonders, not for the first time, how resilient one man can actually be for no one to correct her. The team of soldiers Kaplan used during the Garrick incident came and went after securing their  _employer_  and his  _guest_. Berlin was being held, prepped and ready for Red to arrive. From some of the looks on their faces, Red was more important than whatever he was paying them.

The men and women she'd met since tracking Red down were unshakably loyal, and it frightened her. For all he was, for all he suffered, for all he made others suffer, Red had touched these peoples' lives profoundly, and she imagines that they have touched his. It was in watching their silent exchanges that she realized she had been collected into this group as well. The odd, fearful contemplation that sat deep inside her bones wasn't from the possibility of being surrounded by Red's enemies, but from the possibility of a world absent of the man who could protect her from them.

The ride from the place he was being held to that doctor's house was worse than finding Zamani in her home. That was the one incident she couldn't shake. She may hate Tom and everything he did and didn't do to her, but that fear she felt sitting in the doorway to their dining and living rooms would not go away no matter how much anger she poured into the memory. Losing Red, a second time, had panicked her in a way she couldn't explain. Giving him the same assurances she had given Tom when Zamani broke into her home was like a fatal blow to her heart.

 _You care._  And not only did she care, but she cared  _too much._  She'd let him breach a part of her she hadn't planned to open the door to, and she thinks that he might have been inside before she locked that piece of herself away; that maybe he'd been the architect all along. It's why she hasn't touched him since he held onto her in the ambulance. It's why she keeps her distance; why she wants to run away, but also never let him out of her sight.

Before her were miles of locked doors and he was the doorman. Supposedly, she had her own set of keys, but only for his doors. The entire situation was like some screwed up Japanese Puzzle Box. She hates it and she feels like if she loses him, she'll lose herself.

"How is your shoulder?" Kaplan's level and contrite stare pins her to her chair, and Liz's entire body tenses. It somehow seems sacrilegious to break the silence over her well-being. The question draws Ressler and Dembe out of their respective thoughts. With all eyes on her, she feels cornered.

Ricochet from the wall had embedded itself in her left shoulder as she came through the doorway when they were attacked. The wound itself hurts like a son-of-bitch, but she was getting used to it. That first day, she'd been mostly unconscious and she thinks Dembe had something to do with that. The second, Ressler couldn't keep her in the bed long after he told her that Red was still missing. She and Aram spent three hours sifting through profiles of young women until they got a lead. Lizzie got in touch with Mr. Kaplan and it wasn't long after that they'd found where Berlin had been holding him.

The finer details were a blur, but one thing was for certain: things moved faster when Red's people were involved.  _We're going to make a great team._  She'd been side-lined for the extraction, but she wasn't an invalid and Kaplan wanted to keep her close this time around. Just in case. So she and Dembe, who was still sporting some grazes himself, manned the ambulance.

"It's fine." She doesn't sound very convincing when she shifts and her stitches pinch. There were only five of them.  _Stop being a baby._  "Honest." That draws an imperceptible smile onto the older woman's face; the kind of skin-tight reaction that shows more in her eyes than on her lips. It's a face that reminds her so much of Sam that she can practically hear her father saying,  _Like hell, Butterball._

"Have you cleaned it in the last fourteen hours?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

And just like that, the four of them settle back into the silence from before. Ressler's been oddly compliant since joining her on this rescue mission. And if she didn't know him better, she might have thought that Dembe was rubbing off on him. A lot had happened and a lot was left to be concluded. Despite their constant and reassuring presence, Liz wants them to go the hell away.

There was no reason for the four of them to be in here. It feels weird watching Red with everyone in the room; like this is a private moment and they're stealing it from her. She supposes they all have a right to the chairs they sit in; have a need and vested interest in the man that occupies the bed. But the idea of him waking up to them all picks at her almost as much as she's warmed by the idea that they've come together for this.  _For him_.

Liz takes to fiddling with the bracelet Red pressed into her hand. One of the men holding her had ripped it off when Dembe rescued her. From the way Red was acting…they toyed with him. And that hand Ressler found…the thought of them using her to torment Red creates a lump in her throat. Over the last few weeks of tracking down Berlin and attempting to get the upper hand, Liz had tried not to empathize with the man behind Raymond Reddington.

She was still pissed at him for killing her father, but it was a muted feeling; all dull edges and hollowed wells. She had tried to reach for the anger she'd felt the day she found out, only to find her reserves missing. Anger was an easy emotion for her to feel. But it was no longer directed at Red.

What Berlin had done to Red, to her, to Dembe, to Meera, to Meera's family, to Cooper, and even to Tom, fueled the violent urges that spiraled through her. She wanted to cry, to yell, to throw something…but the room was too occupied, the man in the bed was too peaceful, and she didn't want the others to know she was breaking.

"I'm going to make some more coffee and check the perimeter." Dembe's quiet way seems louder and Liz watches Ressler rise from his chair as well,

"I'll go with you."

Kaplan makes no move to acknowledge the men as they leave, and it's only after Dembe has closed the door that she looks away from Red's direction and twitches a smile the way her aunt did when Sam got sick the first time. It's the kind of smile that touches on reassurance and falls into regret. It whispers  _It's okay_  and echoes  _…well it will be, eventually._  She hates this smile, but she returns it anyway; sure that it doesn't reach her eyes.

"I feel like I should be doing something." Liz endeavors to look somewhere meaningful as she says this: at Red, at his IV bags, or Kaplan's penetrating stare, but she just stares at her scar and remembers the way Red held onto her in the ambulance. The breath that fogged his oxygen mask, the way he closed his eyes, the sound he made.

He'd done that thing with his face she associates with honesty; where it appeared as if his entire world had been made right and was crumbling around him all at once. She didn't understand how a man could show so much with his eyes, how he could swallow so much emotion, how alive he was underneath all the death he carried around with him.

Out of the corner of her eye, Liz is aware of Kaplan crossing her legs and reclining into her chair, but she doesn't respond right away, and Liz wonders if even Mr. Kaplan doesn't know what to do with her.

"He came to me after he killed Garrick." Liz's stomach flips and she looks up to find the older woman watching Red. Two days after he had been taken, she got that call, and asked that question, and he disappeared for weeks before she saw him again. This is the story she had wanted him to tell her when he showed up at her place. The question had been there, the worry, the excitement…it was a surprised by joy moment and he had distracted her away from the inquiry.

"He was quiet while I cleaned him up, when I told him to lie down, when I asked him what he needed. He was just…quiet." Liz watches Kaplan take on a demeanor that is nearly identical to the way Red looks when he's telling stories, and she feels like she's looking at the wrong person. This story isn't specific, it's not detailed the way she wants it to be.  _I'll never get the full version._

Liz's eyes travel over Red's prone figure. Except for the IV's, he was dressed like he was simply napping; vest undone, shoes on, cuffs rolled to his elbows…it reminds her of a long night that ended with her crying on the couch and drinking some horrible kind of moonshine. It reminds her of a comfortable silence, of sunlight breaking through the trees, of dust motes, and the smell of old manuscripts. It's the image of assurance and safety. But it's also a trick.

"He didn't want to be near you while he was cleaning house." Liz and Kaplan's eyes meet for a few seconds, and then the older woman shakes her head while something hard and thoughtful pulls at the corners of her mouth. "And he won't want you to do anything while he deals with Berlin, either."

"Too bad." The Berlin fiasco wasn't just about Red, anymore. Liz's entire life had been infiltrated and orchestrated from the moment she met Tom, and maybe even before that. This wasn't just Red's fight. "Berlin is about the both of us whether he likes it or not."

"And he's all too aware of that." She wishes that sentence accompanied some deep truth like:  _why I'm so important to him, or what he needs me for, or why he insists on risking his life for me, and saving me, and all this crap._  Because then, she thinks she'd appreciate it more than she does. Liz has always had a hard time with altruism; questions it to make sure it is what it is.  _That there's no catch._  She's more paranoid about it now. More paranoid about being used and ignoring the signs. Paranoid, because she doesn't want Red to wield her for some larger purpose, like she suspects he is. She wanted to be brought into the walls and the armor and the inner circle of the truth.

The smell of coffee floats in the air and rouses Kaplan from her seat with a sigh, "I'm going to leave you to stay with him. These joints aren't used to staying still for too long." There's some sort of anxiety that injects itself into Liz's system as she watches Mr. Kaplan head for the door. And she barely gets to protest before the older woman is gone. For the first time since everything happened, Liz is alone with Red and that  _terrifies her._

What she was able to keep hidden around everyone else is slowly creeping up on her from the darker corners of her mind, and she wills herself to stay strong. This push and pull in their relationship had to stop. The further she pushed him away, the faster he seemed capable of pulling her back in. Elizabeth Scott was not fickle, and yet she repeatedly came back to him after walking away.  _Why, though?_  Yes, there were answers she needed that she couldn't get without him, but maybe she could if she tried. So why bother with a man hell-bent on driving her nuts and almost getting her killed a handful of times?

While he said he had never lied to her, he wasn't always forthcoming. He'd gone off to deal with who he thought had been Berlin after she asked if he found him. He'd kept the circumstances of Sam's death a secret from her. He kept their connection a secret from her: the fire, her scar, her name… _my real name_. Her entire childhood was probably buzzing behind those unconscious eyes of his, and he wouldn't tell her. And his constant withholding of that vital information felt like some huge cover-up.  _And cover-ups are lies._

Despite her misgivings, her body moves closer to him whether she wants it to or not, and with it comes her chair; dragged hastily to the left side of his bed so that she doesn't accidentally brush some wounded part of him. Her stitches pull a little but she steels herself and sits down. The closer she is, the more nervous she feels. But the closer she is, the more detailed his condition is as well, and that helps ground her; doubt hemorrhaging inside of her.

She stays because of this,  _all of this._  She stays because of the way he looked at her after she took his hand in the ambulance. She stays because, even though she might be able to find out the answers to her past on her own, she wants  _him_  to be the one to tell her everything.

This extraordinary, dangerous, funny, misleading, heroic criminal frustrated her in more ways than any language can express, but he's important to her. He's important like blood to a human body is important. She needs him if she's going to survive with her mind and heart and soul intact.  _Because I need to come out on the other side of things._

"I don't know why I trust you," She whispers, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "But I do." She stays like that for a long time, and the others leave her alone. She can hear voices every now and then from beyond the door, but as far as she's concerned, no one else exists.

* * *

 

_You're like a mirror, reflecting me_

_Takes one to know one, so take it from me_

_You've been lonely_

_You've been lonely, too long_

_We've been lonely_

_We've been lonely, too long_

* * *

 

Around midnight, a sound reaches her through the nap she didn't mean to take, and she finds Red's unsteady gaze directed at the ceiling. Leaning over, her hand still gripping his, she tries to make him look at her.

"Red?" A blink or two is all she gets in response, and then his eyes close. Sighing, she's almost about to get Mr. Kaplan, when his hand tightens around hers. She's not sure if he's awake or if it's some kind of involuntary movement, but her thumb brushes along the back of his hand, and she squeezes back, just in case.

"Lizzie," He swallows around her name, and his eyes open again. They look around the room slowly and waver in their search for her.

"Hey, Red." Liz doesn't make the same mistake she made in the ambulance. She caters to this experience in a way she didn't when Tom was in the hospital.  _It's different._  Everything was different. His head falls to the left so he can see her better, and she leans forward again. His eyes seem distant and fogged with sensation, and when she can't think of anything else to say, she jostles their hands a little and asks, "Are you in pain?"

"Mmm…no…" Everything about him seems like he's wading through honey; all slow motions and delayed reactions. A thrill of fear plunges her heart into her stomach.  _At least he's talking._  Tom had just blinked at her a few times before falling back asleep. "Dizzy." Liz glances up at the bags hanging above the bed, and chalks it up to the trauma his body has suffered and the meds that Mr. Kaplan has him on.  _Still…_  She doesn't know much in the way of things medical.

"Do you want me to get Kaplan?" He shakes his head, winces, and the dithering silence swallows them. Liz watches him breathe and keeps brushing her thumb across the back of his hand. Just when she thinks his breathing has evened out again, he surprises her and draws in a deep, startled breath, and the noise that comes out of his mouth sounds a lot like her name mixed with Berlin's. "Easy, it's just us." He's panting, now, and she's sure she'd feel a startled heartbeat if she moved her forefinger to check his pulse.

"The Alchemist...Kornish." He says, finally, his eyes moving towards her again; holding her in a way that lay people behold something divine. There's no squirming away from this heavy look, and after a moment she nods just so he'll look away. He doesn't.

She thinks, watching him stare at her, watching him catalog the scratches on her forehead, the sling her arm is in, and the bags she knows are under her eyes, that he would like nothing more than to address them and make them better. But with the lethargy plaguing him, she knows he isn't capable just yet.

"Aram and I figured it out." He makes a little sound in the back of his throat; dry and weak. She thinks there should be some water on the table next to his bed, but there isn't, and looking away seems to have made talking impossible. What she planned to say is lodged in her throat as she glimpses the bruises peeking out from under his collar.

He's still staring at her, and it takes his small frown for her to realize that there are tears burning her eyes. "I don't know what to say." She wants to apologize. She wants to tell him how happy she is that he's finally awake. She wants to tell him that he isn't allowed to die or get hurt or taken or tortured ever again. She wants to demand promises that he probably won't be able to keep. She wants him to talk and laugh off her concern and smile and say something ridiculous or infuriating.

But all he does is pick up their hands and press her knuckles to his mouth. It's not a kiss, exactly, but there is a moment where they linger at his lips, and then he's drawing in a breath and he holds it. There's pain and salvation riddled in ever line on his face. He may not look at her just then, and he may not say anything, but it's too agonizing and too obvious to ignore: that they're both the most important person in each other's lives. Anything she might have wanted to say, anything she might have wanted to tell him, he didn't need to hear any of it. He didn't need to be coddled or reassured.

 _This right here_ , it was all the confirmation he needed.

He had her.

She had him.

When he exhales and lets their hands rest low on his chest… _that's_  when she bursts into tears.


	3. Odd Man Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter from Ressler's POV :)

Keen and Reddington fell into their own routines.

Dembe into his.

Kaplan…who knew what the hell she did besides appear.

Ressler was fairly certain she didn't sleep on the premises. Or there was some sort of bunker he didn't know about, which was impossible because he and Dembe had secured the area three times before either of them were able to think about sitting in a chair long enough to take the ache out of their bones.

Cooper was probably pacing somewhere. Pissed. Frustrated.

Aram was definitely sitting nervous and worried. He could almost picture that one.

Berlin was secure.

He was alive.

And he was waiting.

Waiting to be questioned.

Waiting to tell his tale.

Waiting to die.

* * *

Ressler thinks he and Liz could tell Red the story Berlin told them in the hospital. He thinks he could simplify the outcome. But honestly, he wants to be there for the interrogation. He wants an answer for Meera's death. He wants to know why her kids are without a mother. Why Cooper had scars no one usually lived long enough to talk about.

So he tells himself that's why he's been behaving. He tells himself that's why he helped and that it's why he's stayed. It's not because Liz was hurt. It's not because he feels responsible for her. It's not because of Audrey. It's not because he feels like he owes Reddington anything.  _I'm curious_. And he knows he can play ball long enough to get the answers he thinks he wants.

What he didn't expect were the domestic glimpses he got every time he walked into a God-damn room.

Dembe reclined on a sofa, watching TV. Dembe smiling. Having conversations about jobs they've done in the past: most of Dembe's were obviously illegal. Kaplan, enough said. Period. He's pretty sure she could disarm him with her eyes. Liz reading or laughing or on the verge of tears. Liz after a shower. Liz taking naps. Brushing her teeth. Liz in pajamas. Liz pacing around Reddington. Reddington reading at the kitchen table.  _With glasses_. Reddington asleep. Reddington sleep _less_. Reddington with stubble. Red in jeans. That one was the weirdest. Reddington in T-shirts. That one was weird too. He'd seen Red in all sorts of attire during those five years the man spent evading him, but this was different. No one was watching, or being chased or assassinated or tricked and he found that Red was actually kind of normal in this setting.

It's the state Don finds him in as he comes up the porch steps from his patrol that troubles him. Dressed to the nine's, Red sits in one of the two rocking chairs on the patio outside the front door. Dawn is slowly creeping its way into the sky, and fog clings to the edges of the lake like some ghoulish border; a hazy and ill-functioning wall between beautiful and eerie. He slows, both audibly and physically, and he stops just before the top step.

It appears as though Red hasn't even noticed him. Something devastating and irrepressible hovers in the criminal's eyes before he blinks whatever nightmare he was living away. And then that meticulous stare is pinned to him.

"Donald." The usual, derogatory smile isn't as focused and this is another thing Don is uncomfortable with. The more he watches Reddington recover, the more he sees of the man underneath all the bravado. And the more he recognizes the facets of himself reflected back to him.

"Red." He starts for the door after a moment, knows he should wake Dembe, or put coffee on because Liz will be up soon. But, just as his hand curls around the doorknob, he's stopped by Reddington's hushed voice.

"Do you remember what I told you when we were stuck in the box during Anslo's visit?"  _I wouldn't really call that a visit but,_

"Yeah, most of it." Not everything. He didn't remember Luli dying. He didn't remember Red praying with Dembe. He didn't see the look on Red's face when Anslo first brought Liz into the room. He remembers tears in his eyes when he thought he was going to die. He remembers Red's reasons for living. He remembers using Audrey as a reason all on his own. He remembers feeling astounded by gratitude. Awed by his greatest enemy. He remembers the gun against his temple. He remembers telling them the code and Red slipping the weapon into his hand and shooting the gunman.

And pain. He remembers pain. "Why?"

Red draws in a quiet breath and Don watches the corners of his mouth twitch upward before his face settles into something less reflective and more resolute. His demeanor shifts and his spine holds him a little more erect. Reddington is who he appeared to be that first day: cocky, conceited, untouchable.

"Isn't this view spectacular?" The question draws Ressler's attention away from the tick in the side of the man's cheek and towards the haunting view. The sun still hasn't risen fully and the sky reminds him of this baby blanket he saw at Walmart a week after Audrey died. It had stars on it. They were supposed to glow in the dark.  _Peri-twinkle._  What a silly color name for a gut-wrenching moment. "Reminds me of a lake I almost drowned in as a boy." Just like his time in the box, Don can feel himself being pulled in. These stories, this cadence Reddington adopts when he tells them…it feels like being inebriated and it feels like sinking.

"Despite my father's warnings, I waded out into the middle.  _Always_  curious to see how deep things really were. I was so  _fearless_ …" As he speaks, Ressler watches the water, imagines a young boy swimming out into the middle, of a father's stern voice echoing through the fog, maybe a mother somewhere along the water's edge. But the lake Red was talking about was not this lake. "My foot snagged on a rusty coil of barbed wire. And I thought-I remember  _pretending_  to be fine, that I was just treading water and that if I could get out of it my father wouldn't have to know. I ducked under to try and free myself, and when I failed, when I knew I had to admit defeat, I started to resurface, and couldn't." Screw the lake beyond the porch. It was Reddington's face Don watched now; his heart knocking against his ribs. He's lost sight of the monster and the man appears; worn, guilty, and mournful. There's this complete and total longing in Red's voice that draws on a similar hunger in the younger man.

The younger man that isn't an FBI Agent.

Or a bachelor.

Or a… _I can't even call myself a widower._

_Can't call myself a father._

Was there a word for something that would have been?

Dreams.

Nightmares.

_The first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning._

"All my jostling and tugging had pulled me deeper. I remember reaching for the surface, just beyond my fingertips. The  _terror_  I felt when my lungs began to strain, the panic…but I could see the sunlight through the murkiness and it gave me hope even though I knew I was running out of air." Ressler's body jerks when Red's eyes meet his. This careful, intense study of the older man's face was not something he had planned to be caught in the middle of. In Red's eyes he sees a decision trying to make itself. In them he glimpses a trench of questions and answers too far down in the dark to read or hear or see. In them he watches trepidation weave itself into the man's confidence like weeds to a garden. When he can't take the staring anymore, when he can't take the unspoken conversation Red is trying to convey, he clears his throat and crosses his arms.

"Ah-so is uhm-is that what you're doing now?" Did Don plan on being this perceptive this morning? Did he plan on the riddles and the stories that conveyed certain feelings of a certain, arrogant criminal mastermind? No. But he likes that he's gotten Red's attention. He likes that he's caught him off guard.

"Doing what?" Ressler is pretty sure he could ask just about anything right now and he might get something nearer to the cards that Red plays so close to his chest. He might never get another opportunity for this man to be this vulnerable.

"Running out of air." He watches Reddington sag into the rocking chair; his thumbs tapping the insides of the armrests. It's when Red looks away that Donald sees the exhausted pull in the man's demeanor; the weight he's lost, the tension in his shoulders, the past he can't seem to dust off of his lapels. Since they extracted him and Berlin from that warehouse, Ressler hasn't touched a phone, hasn't used his badge, hasn't kept up the FBI's Poster Child appearance…he's followed Liz's lead, bit his tongue, did a few good things, helped carry Reddington out of a cell and into two houses, killed people, kept watch… _I've traded one job for the other._

"Yes." Red's curt finality throttles his nervous system. He thinks back to the first day: Red secured inside the Post Office, inside an impenetrable box, strapped to a chair, tagged like some dog prone to neighborhood excursions. He thinks of Cooper, of Berlin, of Anslo, of Meera and Tom and Audrey and the world that is flooding the one he knew.

Nothing about this was like Brussels.

It wasn't black and white.

The lines had blown away.

Everything was grey.

_Like bodies in a morgue._

"And this-all of this-the Blacklist, the risks…it's saving you? Giving you air, or whatever?" He knows that all of this poetic nonsense will go away until Red needs to convey something emotional again. He knows that he won't get another moment like this for a while. That Red will piss him off in the next day or so. That they'll eventually be done with the Berlin chapter and begin hunting the other people on Reddington's list. But for now…this microcosm of being sustained the mysteries and yielded the slow answers to them.

Before Red can answer, the door swings in and out comes Liz. Don lurches back and out of the way, recognizing the mixture of worry and suspicion on her face, and Red looks up with a smile.

"Good  _morning_ , Lizzie." Don watches Liz stamp down a smile of her own when she sees what Red is wearing. He thinks the porch might be too small. It was the first thing Ressler had noticed, and it sure as hell was the first thing Liz noticed. "Donald and I were just talking about-"

"Red, why are you dressed like you're going somewhere?"  _And that's my queque._  A hands-on-the-hips Liz was not one he wanted to deal with this early… _or late,_  considering he didn't really sleep before Dembe 'woke him up' for his shift. Just as he turns to head inside, mind jumbled with Red's story and pseudo-confession, he's stopped, once more, by his name.

"Donald, to answer your question," Ressler turns his head over his shoulder, sees Liz's attention shift to him out of the corner of his eye. " _Hopefully._ " It's enough. For now.

As he heads back into the house, he wonders if these were the kinds of conversations Reddington had with Cooper. He wonders what sort of information was passed along. He wonders if his superiors knew the full extent of Red's motives, if there were people out there that were watching them while they watched Red.  _Of course there are._  And what was holding Red just under the surface? What was pulling him down?  _Karma. Life. Secrets._  And as he gets to the kitchen, the tail end of Liz's ranting catches him like a fist to his sternum.

He'd left the door cracked.

She asks, brazenly, what he and Red were talking about.

The muffled, rumbling response is indiscernible; echoes a seemingly endless patience reserved just for her.

And Ressler pauses to inhale the smell of the house around him; the stale remnants of coffee, of the Italian food they had for dinner, of shampoo from the shower he hears running.

Lets it consume him as he mulls over the story of Red drowning as a boy, of sunlight in the murkiness and something just out of reach, and he thinks,

_We were talking about you._

Though he isn't sure what parts she played in that story.

Maybe all of them.

He wouldn't know.


	4. Again and Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (for disclaimer see chapter 1) just a scene from the middle of the night.

Things never happen the same way, and she should have known that.

There's blood everywhere.

Between her fingers.

Under her nails.

On the floor.

The walls.

The carpet.

 _Everywhere_.

* * *

Questions and helplessness were all Elizabeth knew. The hard floor had long since been forgotten. The ache in her knees and her back... _gone_. She was numb except for all the hurt that is distress and rage inside of her. But it's the sound of expensive shoes that drive her nerves through the roof.

Back and forth and back and forth.

A constant grind.

They killed them. She couldn't stop it. And they were going to kill  _her._

He paces before her, clasping and unclasping the hand he's placed behind his back. A real soldier, this one. The stub is hidden by some contraption. A hook. Something sharp that glints from the where he cut his hand off. But this man...he is a lion pacing before lambs.

Three down.

Two to go.

Ressler was hit first, this time. They dragged him in from patrol after they secured the house. Bullet to the heart. Dead before he hit the ground. Dembe took two in the chest before he went down in the corner of the kitchen. His foot is still peaking around counter through the doorway.

It was a blitz after those initial shots. Everyone hit the floor. Crawled. Tried to get to their weapons as quickly as possible, but couldn't manage to fight them off. Kaplan must have died in a room Liz couldn't see. Or they were torturing her. Either way, there was no sign of the older woman, and her expertise was desperately needed right now.

A knife was sticking out of Red's abdomen.

Right where Tom left it before he retreated to the corner of the room; concealed in the shadows as opposed to the plain sight where he'd done his job.

Dated her.

Married her.

Had sex with her.

Dreamed of their future with her.

Painted the baby's room.

Yelled. Laughed.  _Pretended_.

"If you help me save him, you can get your answers," she was holding Red the way a mother holds a sick child: all arms and a soothing cacophony of hush. If she pulled the knife out, she wouldn't be able to staunch the blood flow  _and_  kill Berlin.  _It's one or the other._  If she didn't, every tiny breath Red took put him in danger of nicking an organ or something worse. She wasn't sure how they would make it out of this. And the indecision left her feeling bereft; shoreless in an ocean of dread.

"I have my answers, Agent. Why do you think I know who is responsible?" And just like that the man they call Berlin crouches in front of them. On reflex, Liz tightens her hold on the man bleeding to death in her arms. "I just want him to suffer." She feels like an ant under a magnifying glass, and the holder is determining whether or not she'll hold still long enough so he can torch her under the sun. "But it seems our mutual friend has decided to pass out." Berlin rises with a thoughtful sound and beckons to the shadows. "We'll have to fix that."

Tom emerges with something that resembles a cattle prod and two arms snake their way under her own and around her middle. She's yelling and squirming but like boas, the arms constrict, and she can't get free. She finds herself on a chair faster than she thought possible; tied down, too secure and immobile. Tom touches that thing to her sternum with a look of total grief and adoration.  _I'm so sorry_  and  _I love you_  haunting the lines on his face and before it settles in his eyes.

That's when the world falls silent and her body is overcome with sensation; bugs crawling under skin with fire and rigor. Nothing in the world rivals the taxation of electrocution.  _Your blood is boiling_. It burns and pulses and knocks into you like a bull; dropping you in a heap of bones and stones for muscles.

Air doesn't exist. She is useless and used at the same time. Screaming without relief or reprieve. Until finally...it stops and she's left gulping oxygen; a fish out of water. Her agony and the movement have jarred Red into the waking world by the time it's finished. Liz is left spitting threats and pleas and warnings to Berlin as he stands over Red and bends down.

Terror has never felt so heavy. Sorrow never so determined. When their enemy's hand grips the handle of the knife and twists, the sound that comes out of Red's mouth scrapes its way into her ears and claws at her brain.

She was wrong about electrocution being the worst thing.

"Please don't." Bargaining. She was the FBI. At least part of her was. She had things she could offer. Lies she could tell now that could be made true later if it saved enough of the right lives. "If you stop this," Her eyes dance between Berlin and Tom and then they settle on Red. "I can-I can get you a deal. Anything you want. A way out of this mess." Berlin looks away from Red's scrunched up face and towards her before he laughs.

This isn't what she expected at all but it means the worst is coming. People who want out don't laugh at the offer of it. People who want to live beyond their deeds don't-

"Tell me Agent  _Keen_ , what do you think comes after for a person who has lived for the sweet nectar of revenge?" She doesn't want to answer. She doesn't want him to tell her. She knows. "Oblivion." He steps away from Red, leaving the knife there, and gives her this look of calculated longing. "At first, I thought you were just a minion, a pawn," Berlin has a habit of drawing his words out; lets the vowel sound draw and draw along his vocal chords. "But, it seems you were far more important. My man was right in not killing you before." The most imperceptible glance is afforded to Tom, then. It was small and insignificant but it echoed into her soul the way she thought his vows had.

The next few moments are never clear. They never stick. It's just Red's voice and Tom's apology. Sometimes it's Sam, other times it's a face she can't discern or it's Berlin. And then there's a gun she never hears going off and-

Reality slams into her lungs. The air is more concrete. The feeling of the couch against her side is stuffy and uncomfortable, but the room is clean and smells of cedar and life. It's not covered in blood. Her hands are clean. Her arms hold nothing but the space between them and her body.

"Nightmare." Red's voice filters in through the sound of her heartbeat and the thundering of her nerves; smooth and tapered in knowing. "But you came out of it." He says this like he knew she would, as though overcoming a great hurdle. There's pride and congratulations and a strange mixture of regret, but it makes her feel rooted in the moment. Heaving herself into a sitting position, she shivers. Nights in this lake house have been the opposite of the muggy afternoons. She thinks she might be able to see her breath.

"Why are you up?" Even though she doesn't know what time it is herself, the view of Red sitting on the opposite chase lounge was disconcerting. He looked unkempt. Sweaty. Haggard. His shirt was wrinkled. Vest undone. His fists were clenched at his sides. "And still dressed." She'd seen him in casual clothes, but not pajamas. Not even sweats or something more comfortable than all the clothes he thinks he can wear to escape in. This earns her a small chuckle but the slight wince on his face clues her in.

_He's in pain._

Physical.

Emotional.

But it's still pain.

"Tell me about your dream, Lizzie." She isn't sure she wants to. In fact, a part of her wants to give his dodgy way of conversing right back to him.  _Tell me about yours._  But that sounds too much like an elementary school tactic. Liz runs a hand over her face as if she might be able to shed the remnants of the dream that stick to her like cobwebs in the corners of an attic.

"It's about you...us.  _All of us._ " Her heartbeat jumps a little as she thinks about all the ways she's seen them die since they've gotten here, and she suppresses the urge to run away. She hadn't meant to fall asleep on the couch, and she thinks that if she were to excuse herself, he wouldn't stop her. The middle of the night was a private endeavor for those troubled by sleeplessness. Usually, she would wander or pace along the porch, but it's different when there are eyes to watch her every move. And the fact that they're Red's eyes doesn't seem to make a difference. She doesn't want him to see the panic she feels lingering in the tips of her fingers and around her lungs. "Everyone dies differently each time, but you do die, well not you, but you  _are_  hurt, and they shoot me to make you suffer and that's when I wake up."

She looks to find Red's eyes studying her in the level way they do when she's upset; a common function for her in the evenings. Nighttime was when the past decided to speak a million different avenues into her brain; spewing this and that and the inverses of each.

"And this time?" He asks as if it doesn't bother her, as if he actually wants to know the way he almost,  _nearly,_ dies. Maybe he  _does_  want to know. Maybe he wants to entertain that particular way of dying. The notion that he's thought of how he is going to die, of how he will eventually meet his end, frightens her with all the possessive qualities she is capable of having.

 _Death cannot have him._  It was a point she had made this morning on the porch after he refused to tell her about what he and Ressler had been discussing. All that nonsense of going to question Berlin after only a week and a half of recovery had sent her into a fit. After pointing out a few prominent issues with this plan, she forbade him to leave; which actually turned out to be a thing he allowed her to do. He had seemed almost amused at the prospect before his eyes watered into the coloration of awe.

He did that a lot lately. In the park when she tried to get him to go with her before Agent Gary-Martin arrived to cage him.  _What are they going to do? Kill me?_  When he told that story about nearly dying.  _Nothing is worse than losing you._  When she showed up in that taxi and chose to stay with him. It's the look of confusion and gratefulness and the sudden shock of worry.

"Tom stabbed you like Zamani stabbed him." She wonders if she should bring up the electric shock and the sound of his pain that seems to call out to her from the shadows; the ambient noises scattering her courage like water to an oil fire.

"Scars to match." He's thoughtful as he looks off towards the door. She supposes that it is his fault Zamani came into her home and terrorized her and her husband.  _Fake husband._

But really, Red isn't thinking of that, and if she knew, she may never speak to him again. Another dismissal. Another goodbye. The final straw. The reason why Kaplan barred her from any room where his bandages were being changed or he was getting dressed or examined or patched up. They had all been very discreet.  _Scars to match._  If all there was between the day he showed up and the day she became an orphan was a scar to match Tom's, maybe he wouldn't feel so condemned. But there were more. Far more. And he wasn't ready to burn a second time. Not yet. No, the agony and the defeat and the loss would come along as surely as his enemies would.

"Yeah," Liz's thoughts drag her into the pieces of yesterday when she was sitting in the kitchen while Mr. Kaplan helped Red stretch his shoulder a little. When they emerged, he had sagged into the chair beside her own and downed a muscle relaxant he'd been given. After he regained his limited mobility, Mr. Kaplan resorted to cheeky with a dash of stern in order to keep him compliant enough to take his meds. This different atmosphere of life had glued her compassion to someone she should still want to hate or punch or hurt, but the idea of doing anything to cause him more pain made her feel like the victim of a voodoo doll; the pin having been driven straight into her heart. "Red, about earlier, I just want you to be safe. I  _need you_  to be safe."

She stares long into the hard wood floor at her feet after she says this; quiet and nothing as eloquent as the way he portrays how he feels. She can tell her fair share of stories, but he lives for them. After the silence yawns wider and wider, Liz looks up and finds him peaceful; his eyes closed, his breathing even, with his hands slack. She watches him for a moment, an odd stirring of need pumping itself into her heart. The need to hold some part of him. The need to freeze time. The need to keep him, right there, forever.

After a heartbeat more, she crosses to him and the sound of her moving off the couch wakes him. He glances up at her; eyes drooping, his smile a little embarrassed.

"You're the one that needs to be safe, Lizzie." It's all garbled by exhaustion, but he picks up the conversation where he had dozed. She doesn't care. They're done talking tonight. He lets her move him so that he's lying down. Lets her prop his right side against the back of the sofa. Lets her bend one of his knees for further support. She asks if he needs a blanket. He declines. And Liz, after a moment of kneeling next to him, of studying him the only way she feels deprived of on a regular basis,  _close and uncensored,_  she retreats to her couch again.

It takes him a little while to fall back asleep, but not as long as she would have thought. Maybe he'd taken something for the pain or something for what ever drove him from his bed tonight, but she watches him fight it until all that exists is the steady rise and fall of his chest in the dark. It's a scene she could watch until the day she dies, his breathing and wellness and life.

It's what she watches all night.

The tiny movements in his face.

The twitch of a finger.

How much more she sees when the sun starts to creep into the sky.

And then it will end.

He'll wake up and watch her.

She'll pretend to be asleep.

Both willing the safety of the other.


	5. Disarm Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (see chapter 1 for disclaimer)

Tired.

They were all so damn tired.

One morning, they had settled deep into routine.

The next, silence reigned and an exhaustion none of them had anticipated crept in under the door like an icy draft and  _stayed_.

* * *

 

_he said to me,_

_child, I'm afraid for your soul_

_these things that you're after, they can't be controlled_

_this beast that you're after will eat you alive_

_and spit out your bones_

* * *

 

Red was watching the fire Dembe had made this morning with a gaze that spanned oceans. The grand, yet domesticated quality of the fireplace was becoming. It fit with the rest of the house as well as every wall and picture frame and piece of furniture. There was nothing special about it, just the stone hearth and the warmth that seeped into the floor at his feet. Morning was never so alive, and yet here he was; drowsy from sleeping longer than he had wanted and bothered by a dream of a little church in Andorra where he and Dembe had been holed up.

Such a rich landscape to ruin with blood and business.

He'd lost so much blood that night.

_So much blood._

* * *

 

_she'll string you along and she'll sell you a lie_

_but there's nothing but pain on the edge of a knife_

_there is no courage in flirting with fear_

_to prove you're alive_

* * *

 

There had been nothing else to focus on in that sparse environment. Just old, stone walls, a dresser with its dim lamp, the bed he'd been laid out on, and the crucifix hanging on the wall across from him. Straining, Red had laid there trying to master breathing without making his right side move with every inhalation. He'd been at it for what felt like hours, soaked in sweat and trembling, when a knock startled him so much that he felt as though his brain had jumped.

"Andrés and Fr. Román tell me you will not let them administer pain medication." The priest he recalls operating on him the night before stands in his doorway. He remembers the young seminarian that came into the room with a few syringes and a tiny glass bottle of analgesics. Tried to tell him that these were coupled with a necessary antibiotic as well, but Red fought him. Fought the other priest as well, a tall, gangly thirty-something who gave up after Red grabbed him around the throat and growled some low threat.

He'd paid for it of course, swam in pain and guilt and nausea.

"Yes." It was the only word he could get out at the moment. His eyes take in the steaming bowl in the priest's hands, the cloth draped over his forearm, and he lets his head roll back into the pillow when glancing that way strains his eyes too much.

"A foolish decision." This statement would have probably been comical if Red could have mustered the necessary energy to be amused. But he didn't really care what this man thought of his medical preferences. He  _would not_  be sedated. The priest swung the door until it was only half open and turned back to face the room. Red watched out of the corner of his eye as the man approached the bed, and placed the bowl on the dresser beside it. "I was angry with your friend after you two fell through our door last night. I do not think you remember my raised voice a few hours ago but, you very nearly carried death into our arms." The faint splash of the towel being dropped into the water echoes in his ears. The priest begins to roll his sleeves up to his elbows.

There's a quiet but crushing relief somewhere inside of him at the other man's words. "Dembe's alright, then." A statement; an injection of graciousness and profound certainty beyond the rasp in his voice.

"Yes, a few grazes and bruises. He's eating. And he is very worried about you. I did not see him sleep." The sigh that comes from the priest beside him seems to be a sentence all on its own. It tells him that there is tension and fear and exhaustion outside this room.

An intake of air causes his side to pull uncomfortably, and his body is a little more rigid. Red focuses around the pain. Focuses on breathing and the priest's quiet voice. "I was convinced, after seeing the men that came looking for you two, the rumors that spread about the town after they left, that the devil had delivered you." The words sting in a predictable way; strike him in all the vulnerable places he can't protect.

Dembe had all but dragged him the last hundred yards into the church's Sanctuary.

Quiet as mice.

There had been blood on one of the pews.

Stained rags on the floor in the kitchen.

The smells of antiseptic and metal.

The slosh of Andres mop on the floor.

The low lighting, pain, and finally restless unconsciousness.

"We'll leave today. You'll be compensated…for your risk." The priest looks down at him and smiles for a moment. A second later, the man's brow furrows and the sharpest eyes Red has ever seen examine him from above. His condition seems to concern him a little more than Red would like. He can practically see the compassionate cogs whirling to life inside the man's head. Red can hardly blame the worry set in the priest's demeanor. It's obvious that the church's refugee is far too weak for travel.

" _You_  are not listening," There's a mild sort of amusement in the priest's tone as he paces away from the dresser, grabs the chair from beside the door, and moves it next to the bed. "I said that I  _was_  convinced. I have since changed my mind." Red eyes the man with a sense of defeat. This pastor, he had to be, was becoming more and more of a conundrum by the second. Gentle and deft fingers pull up the side of Red's shirt to bare the stitches and the angry blush around them.

They press the surrounding skin and feel the tension there like stone. Red grits his teeth, and his fists grab the sheet on the bed. The priest reaches for the rag he placed in the steaming bowl of water, and tells Red to take a deep breath.

One…Two…Three…Hold it.

Breathe out.

Again…

Good, good.

Hold it…

And the warm compress is laid heavily on Red's aching side so quickly that he nearly bites his tongue. He's sure that there's a sound of protest coming out of his mouth, especially when he tries to lurch upward, but is stopped by the man's arm pressing him back. There's something else in that water. Something salty and chemical.

"What's that smell?" He breathes the words out as he falls back, the muscles in his body protest as they resume their lax position. His chest is heaving. Panic steals through his veins.

"Easy...breathe. Just breathe." It's not so easy when there's fire crawling along his skin where the incision was mended. The warmth from the rag and the water soak into his skin and permeate his muscles there. "Slow breaths…. _There_  we go." It's then that Red finds himself horribly exhausted. The relative safety buries him in something inescapably wonderful. "It's a saline compress, supposed to help draw out superficial infections and soothe straining muscles." Later, Red won't be able to remember the exact amount of time that transpired. Just that the heat and the smell and the dim lighting in the room had created a state of peace within him.

And how the priest's gentle voice told him to hold this and keep that right there. How every new compress he administered diluted the pain. His eyes, God they could close and he could have slept, but there is a hand gripping his shoulder, and there were words again like,

"No, no, brother. Stay awake a little while longer. I mean to speak with you." And he does, with every ounce of concentration he possesses, Raymond Reddington stays awake. The priest grabs another cloth, this one cool and dry, to run against his forehead and down his face; it eats up all the sweat like the compresses ease his taxed and trembling muscles. "The road you came down is haunted by superstition. Between here and Prats is a cross along the road that symbolizes great tragedy." Red blinks a few times when a wave of dizziness assaults him. The priest, finished with drying him off, lifts the edge of the hot compress and appears to be more or less satisfied than he was before. The man's face gives very little answers beyond worried and relaxed. Two fingers press in on his wrist at his pulse.

"There is a popular legend about a boy who was so afraid that the devil could appear at any time, he refused to travel that road. So his friends decided to play a trick on the boy and sent him this way, to Canillo, for some wine. But the boy was reluctant, and in order to keep him from being afraid his friends gave him a rigged gun to protect himself with. Well, the boy goes and reaches Canillo, fills the skins with wine, and seeing that he has a lot of time left before he must return to Prats, he decides to walk around town for a bit. The boy stashes the gun and the wine skins behind the door to the innkeeper's and heads off to explore the town." The priest reclines a bit, his hands folding in his lap, and Red feels as though he is drifting; mind fogged with the narrative.

"While the boy was gone, the innkeeper found the boy's wine and as he was drinking it, he examined the gun and noticed that it was improperly loaded. The innkeeper, thinking that whoever needed this gun was probably going to use it for protection against wild animals. So he fixed the gun and loaded it properly. The boy comes back to collect his things and he heads back. Meanwhile, the boy's friends had planned to surprise him with a hoax. Around dusk, the boy sees a white ghoulish figure on the road ahead of him, and thinking this white specter was the devil, doesn't hesitate to shoot him on sight."

"After seeing that the devil was felled, the boy raced back to the village and told them that he had killed Satan. Snickering, his friends asked him to prove it knowing that it was just one of their peers in a white sheet, and when they returned to the spot where the boy had killed the devil, they only found the blood from their friend and the white sheet, for the devil had come in the night and stolen the body of the boy they sent to frighten the superstitious child."

The priest lifts the cooling compress off of Red's side, and it's the first time since he entered the room that Red is aware enough to take in his entire face. Worn, tired, but full of life and some kind of weight he cannot identify. Joy and all the wisdom from it.

"They erected the Creu dels Set Braços, cross with seven arms, to represent the seven friends. And one day, the seventh arm, for the boy that was killed, just fell off. Ironic, no? It's supposed to caution travelers. Keeps the cost of fear and using that fear against your neighbors ripe in our minds. That we must be... _responsible_  for one another." Red leans back into the bed as if it might swallow him. The priest rises to check the temperature of the water in the bowl, and fiddle with some things that Red cannot see. The image of a boy shooting a gun and celebrating the death of the demon that scared him so much seems to be outweighed by the thought of the fear the other boy must have felt when he realized that he'd been shot and that he was dying…that his trick meant the devil would actually come for him instead. That they taunted the Gambler and lost. "Out of my own fear, I was very tempted to turn you over to those men last night."

 _Perhaps he should have._  "What happened to the boy?" Red's voice is just a whisper at this point but the priest looks at him as though he were a petulant child and sits back down to view his patient in earnest.

"You see? That is why I did not." He runs a hand down his face, checks the area of Red's incisions, once more, almost as though out of nervous habit, for anything worrisome, and then flips the edge of his shirt back down. "The boy confessed. He redeemed himself." There is expectation in the middle-aged priest's face before him, a sort of mischief that sparks in his eyes, coupled with a deep knowing.  _No_. Red swallows and his attention drifts down to the saline drip attached to his arm by an IV.

"Father, if I give confession, we will be here for years." It was supposed to bring some sort of brevity to the situation. But he can't even smile. There are eternities and black holes to occupy his mind; wells that run too deep and whose shadows are too fathomless.

And this room is too small for all that.

"Then tell me of the sin that haunts your eyes when you look upon our cross here." Red's eyes slide from the priest to the crucifix hanging across from his bed. The small thing…it is of the Suffering Christ. All bloodied from countless lashes of the scourge and whip…the crown of thorns almost seems trivial compared to the way Jesus is presented on this particular cross. Shredded _. Or maybe, on fire._

He stares at it, and a crippling sensation tries to choke him where he lies powerless in the bed; trapped in a place he never wanted to step foot in again. Churches where he was married. Where his daughter was baptized…his wife and daughter were faith and life and love, and yet his eyes were still drawn to this bloodied figure on the cross. It brings him back to a place of oceans; where pain and grief tried to drown him as he waded and bobbed above the surface. At some point, a hand or a shark will pull him under with truths he knows he won't be able to handle, and he will be fodder in the darkness.

It's clear to the priest, by now, that his patient will not be forthcoming. Dembe had said as much earlier, after the men had come and gone from their secluded place in the hills. Andorra was its own sanctuary. They didn't need people like Raymond Reddington bleeding his way through town. And yet…

"You know, when I was a seminarian, I fell into desolation. I could not feel God's presence. My prayer life became a door I could not enter. And I was convinced that the priesthood was not for me. So I dropped out after many months of this black drought in my soul, and I went back home defeated. My parish priest, a man I respected but didn't take very seriously, he was quite the jokester, not a very studious man, he stopped me after mass one day and he told me that he would very much like for me to go on mission with Catholic Relief Services to represent our parish. He told me that it would help me…'open my door' is how he put it." Red thinks on all the doors he's broken into. The doors that were slammed in his face. The doors he opened when he should have turned away from them. The doors he was often trapped behind. Doors riddled with bullet holes. Doors he had rammed his shoulder into. Doors, far away in the future, that might not open for him no matter how he tries to get inside; no matter how penitent or desperate his pleas.

"I rebelled for a few months, fell into old habits, but I did eventually get hired to help with their emergency response team. My first stop was Sudan. It is why I can speak enough Arabic to console your friend in there." That's obviously not where this priest's story ends. This youthful but age-old man who left seminary, went into a dangerous part of the world, survived, and then came back to become a priest?  _…oh, that's not the end of the story…_  There are too many shadows in this priests face. Too many sparks of danger and dull, tired wisdoms.

"Dembe says, how  _did_  he put it...that you are swimming in grief. That there is a fire consuming your heart and soul. That many different al-jinnī hunt you." Red sighs, feels his side twinge, and he closes his eyes against the mild rush of pain. Dembe is too observant for his own good.  _Much too observant._ This priest makes him curious in a disjointed way. He is neither up to the task of fending him off with a clever riposte, nor does he find that he wants to send him away. So finally, when he gets control of his breathing again and the room seems to beg for words, Red sighs,

"The fire burned me long ago, Father."

"And yet, you return to the flames again," he points to the scars peeking out from his back along his shoulder. Touched by fire. Real fire.  _Cooked_. That was an agony he used to wake up smelling. "Again," the scar between two ribs on his left side. The time he died in Marrakesh. His punctured lung. Miraculous timing on his team's part. Those unbelievable two and half minutes of dark pain and hope and redemption. All the answers his beat-less heart tried to give him. "And again." He indicates the stitches he'd sewn into his skin last night. The knife that had cut him open. So much blood.

"Father-" He was about to ask him to stop. Ask that he be left alone.  _Please, please, leave me alone._  Because as much as the compresses had given him some relief, it was only temporary, and he was going to pass out, which he really didn't want to do. He needed to concentrate. Talking was sapping him of his limited energy, and this priest's voice sounded too much like his own when he'd put his daughter to bed.

"You are suffering, my friend."  _For many, many reasons._  They were no longer talking of the physical pain he was in now. Red was all too aware of the time several months from today, where he will have to surrender himself to his friends at the Bureau. That Berlin is becoming a bigger problem. The "they have someone on her, Dearie" message isn't one he can let sit for long. "Will you tell me why you do not want the antibiotics?" Red is beginning to sweat again, a light tremble through his body every few minutes along with a wave of renewed pain. The priest cannot be expected to tend to him all night. He knows that this passing in and out of consciousness is not affording his body the rest it needs for him to leave in the next few days.

"I can't sleep." A hum of understanding comes from his caregiver and Red's attention slides back to the crucifix on the wall. The burning wreckage his life had become, all the bodies that lay rotting in his wake, seem magnified. How many loved ones sat up waiting for those corpses to come home? To pick themselves off the ground, dust themselves off, and return to their family's arms.

To be cradled.

To know, deep down, that everything would be okay.

There is so much closure he will never be able to give in the pursuit of his own. "I know that you can do all things; no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures My plans without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know." Red's voice hitches, his heart screaming for him to stop, as he tries to battle his exhaustion and the press of emotion in the back of his throat. He needs to get the words out. Needs... _something_...something more than just fear to explain this pit of grief he can't get out of. "You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer Me.' My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I-" The world falls away; his voice broken, brittle, and dry. The desert in his soul becomes the desert in his mouth. Somewhere in the midst of his heaving chest, and the fists that clench around the blanket underneath him, moisture has come to blur his vision.

The promise of a second chance ghosts over him.

A graceful smile.

Jovial laughter.

The smell of her and the house and the life they created tottering in the foyer.

The security of arms around his waist.

The brush of lips to the corner of his mouth.

How quickly all of that was taken away from him.

"Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." The priest finishes the verse for him, and Red finds the man has taken hold of his hand. The words he couldn't say are like an ice pick in his chest that he has no hope of breathing around. "You pick an interesting verse, my friend."

"It's where-" Red wets his lips and swallows around the memories before his eyes. It's like she's  _right there._  He ignores the firm weight of regret on his chest with the success of a man trapped beneath an elephant. "…Where I am now and where I am headed."

* * *

 

_I've seen the true face of the things you call Life_

_the voice of the siren that holds your desires_

_but Death, she is cunning, and clever as hell_

_and she'll eat you alive_

_oh, she'll eat you alive_

* * *

 

"Ressler and I can only be gone for so long before protocol becomes...complicated, you know." Lizzie's voice waltzes in around his musings and pulls him out. He glances at her feeling as though the sun has blinded him; in a trance he can't shed. His eyes are dry from staring into the flames, and his face is touched by the light in ways that make him seem more haunted than usual.

Dramatic cuts of history and too much remembering.

"Are you alright?" She takes a step closer to him and he lets his head fall back against the chair. Red closes his eyes, breathes in that wonderful smell of burning pine, and nods,

"Budapest in the spring." He hears her sigh, and that automatic smile of his clicks into place. He didn't have to explain to her all the ways this morning had affected him. That her stare was making him burn with exposure. How the memory of a church was sitting in the room with them. How much he longed to disappear into the shadows until he was well. No compassionate glances. No hands to touch his elbow when she thinks he looks frail. No one new to press him. "I was thinking of Budapest in the spring."

He had an entire network of people to take care of him and patch him up. He didn't need her eyes and her smiles and her calming but unnerving presence.

"Red," The severity of her tone makes his heart jump. Their eyes meet, and hers fall a little to trace the lines of his face and the minute movement along his jaw. He sees the hurt there, the worry and the fear. How the anger builds steadily behind those eyes. The two of them are stepping back to examine the lines of their trust; how its mercurial nature is something she dislikes just as much as he does. "I can't do this if we go back to the way things were before because 'Budapest in the spring' is not an answer." Teeth. Sharp ones. He sometimes forgets that she has them now. A sigh filters out of his nose and he nods, giving his attention to the flames once more. The thought of that church and the priest, his wife and daughter, that cross on his wall...

Moments of weakness.

He's not sure if he truly regrets them, or if the feeling that sits in his gut afterwards is just a defense mechanism; a thing to dull him after letting his emotions flood his system. It's the sensation of fighting without movement; the futile squirming of an animal stuck in quicksand. The traits that have kept him alive in the past wrestle with the faith he so achingly wants to place in the young woman before him. Their alliance was still a sheltered thing. Like it or not, the armor he's kept in place for two decades doesn't just slough off at the sight of her standing beside him.

He has to breathe.

He has to peel himself back.

Be open and resigned.

Be ready.

Just say the words.

Prepare for her response and hope he doesn't get burned.

Or more appropriately stabbed.

"I over did it yesterday." It's easier to pretend that the jaunt around the lake had been a thing born of restlessness and ego. It's easier to let the tension and pain linger in his chest from his range of motion exercises. Anything is better than telling her the memory of a dream. Or where a special church sits in the foggy mountains between Spain and France.

"You're hurting." She says it like she's trying to keep her voice in check; how it wavers between peaceable and combative. Her words resonate deep within him, echo the voice of a holy man's concern for the devil, and he smiles; thoughtful and reminiscent. He sees her balled fists and how her bravery prevails beyond the doubts of his continued openness with her. He doesn't mean to push her back when she gets too close.

"No more than usual."

An honest deflection.

She says nothing about this.

Just sits with him in the other chair and stares at the fire with stress in the hollows of her cheeks.

And somewhere in the distance a moment would come for them where the road would fork and splinter off. Truth would cloy in the air like smoke and he knows that if he doesn't make her believe that he is the person she could trust in the murkiness of doubt, sin, devils, and darkness...perhaps his judgment would devour him as surely as the flames from her fire had.

This time, though, if the worst were to fall upon him and she ended up loathing every fiber of his being, they wouldn't just scar him.

Raymond Reddington, without the pensive young woman sitting across from him, would be ashes.


	6. Quiet Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> might be a two parter. It's giving me grief, though. enjoy!

Berlin was now just a small mile-marker in their history.

A pin dropped into their expanding GPS. Oh it had been bloody and frightening and revealing in many aspects. But it was just a blip.

A light on a map blinking faintly as though it were laughing;  _those good old days._  The slow moves of chess, the harrowing 'check', and the decisive 'check mate' that ended the Berlin chapter faded into the recesses of their minds and only circled around like a vulture when something bad happened; biting into the back end of their thoughts when  _"It coulda been worse."_

Berlin is a corpse.

A body no one would find.

And they had more names to cross out.

Months of names, names,  _names_.

* * *

Their lives changed in ways that no regular civilian would have been able to see.

They shifted gears.

Their body count rose.

They were leaner.

Drawn and sallow on mornings when sleep was what you did on Red's plane or the kind of slumber that occurred after forty-eight hours of go, go,  _go_. The hard and fast kind where they woke up and couldn't quite shake the exhaustion from their limbs.

All the hunting and searching drew lines on their faces and tossed shadows under their eyes. Being hunted and searched  _for_...that was a different kind of change; exacted a different tax on each of them. The brushes with bullets and explosions and missiles pummeled their nerves and, sometimes, their bodies. The threat of quieter weapons like knives and secrets and lies were slower but no less devastating in their impact. They all drew in on themselves.

Ressler's tough guy act was a dull shine on days where he came into the office just to throw himself into the chair at his desk. If wasn't Red's business, he had no interest in it. He'd survived too many times to risk an off-handed assignment just cause Red vanished for a week. There was always some report to sign off on or some question regarding the mystery of Reddington himself. There are days when he doesn't recognize his partner. It's not that they don't cover for one anther. It's not that he doesn't trust her judgement. It's just.. _.Liz is a different kind of animal these days_.

She is wading in the shadows between streams of light and laughter. She hadn't stayed put longer than two days for a while now. Even a day was stretching it. The angles of her face were sharper. Her expressions colder. Buried under months of constant work and close calls, was that grifter. She could still con her way through what was necessary, but the moment the job was done she ignored the giddy surge of a trick well done and disappeared. If she didn't need to be there, she wasn't. Red's company was the only company she could stand for more than two hours off-duty. There was a war within her between reality and the world her non-government friends lived in. Red's lifestyle echoed her own.

His preparedness was more fluid. He was more slippery than she was; always getting away before anything harry could start. She watched him; mental notes and lists of things to practice. She was at the precipice of addiction to the undercover work she often found herself immersed in. The role was no longer a role. The aliases were no longer  _just_  aliases. She remembers all of the random names Red gave her, built vague and interchanging backgrounds close to the truths of her own. Made sure to memorize the lies she told and then recall them as if they were distant memories; a practice from her youth. A great thing to believe your own lies. A dangerous thing.

Inching closer to the criminal world.

Dembe watched Red take his usual risks. He watched him barely make it out alive. He watched him get himself caught too many times for his and, to his pleasant surprise, Agent Keen's liking. There hadn't been anything major. Scuffles and a modicum of torture, a car wreck or two...not too bad.  _Not too bad._

It could always,  _always,_  be worse.

* * *

It is impatience that writhes like a pit of snakes in his gut. So calm. So still. So invariably present, Dembe does not often find himself riled by his surroundings. Were it not for this uneasy curdling in his gut, the steam from the sewers might create a certain atmosphere. Add beauty to the unpleasant. The years have brought him far and wide. They've thrust him into situations that many could not fathom. And so, when the air feels off and the crowd lessens its murmuring in the streets at their back, Dembe feels exposed for the first time in a long time.  _I have missed something._

He looks up.

The buildings are too close together.

Their associate's car is too far away.

The alley is a dead end.

 _Fish in a barrel_.

"Raymond." He so rarely interrupts of his own volition, standing taut and imposing four steps behind his responsibility, but this cannot wait. There is a boy inside of him watching a man, a woman, and then a man again test his strength and endurance, squeeze his biceps, his shoulders, making him do horrible things, and that boy who didn't run is screaming at him to do so now. There's a tilt of Raymond's head in his direction. Dembe meets his eye.

"Gentlemen, I'm afraid something's come up. I'll be in-"

 _Touch_.

That was what he was supposed to say.

But like countless times before, that dull sound is there, the sigh comes. There's a spray of blood that doesn't reach him. Dembe reacts to Raymond's legs giving out. Another shot burns past them, along part of his fore arm, skips off the pavement, and buries itself in the brick of the alley wall on their right. It came from up ahead. A few more shots burry themselves in the men they were just speaking to. Besides the sound of bodies falling, there is only the beat of boots echoing towards them. Impending doom.

"Get me up."

He does, but only marginally. He looked too long at the stain spreading across Raymond's side. Tried to place a hand there before they moved. He didn't see them.

Too quickly.

Too quietly.

Practiced and familiar.

There are two shadows closing in on them. Their movements are deliberate and Dembe recognizes the style of professionalism: the calm, the ease, the efficiency.

There is that inevitable blow to the side of his head. The dull pulse of pain reverberating through his skull.

His vision starts to give.

There are words muffled and terse.

Arms slither under his own.

The movement of being dragged topples the careful hold he has on consciousness. Dembe watches a woman kneel over Raymond. Something in him stirs violently.

And then there is darkness.

* * *

Agony.

Dembe knows it comes in many forms. He has known quite a few of those forms as intimately as he knows the cough of a silenced bullet, the vague exhale of Raymond's reaction to being hit, how many seconds he stopped breathing before he caught his friend in his decent to the pavement.

Agony.

It is the smell of his flesh burning. The taste of anger after he disobeyed and was punished. It is the sound of heartbreak and fear, of shock and oppression. It is in feeling reality like a blow to the back of his head. It is being starved and drugged and used and then, finally, accepting help when everything is numb. Agony is the process of becoming whole, of gluing himself back together in places no one knew about, of feeling when he swore never to feel again. It is the whisper of his darkest hours on random nights. It is humility in the face of pride. Forgiveness in the face of vengeance. Of words and paper and the comforting smell that only libraries seem to hold. It is in missing those things. It is the drowsy sensation of losing too much blood. Of not being able to shake exhaustion and nausea.

Agony is wisdom.

But it is also waking up chained to a chair and knowing the man he calls brother is bleeding where he cannot stem the flow of blood.

Where two others have him.

Where he can do nothing.

The room is inconsequential. It's like every other dingy space he's been locked up in for the sake of the man on the other side of the door. The door that whispers a fleeting, strangled madness into every pore of his body. This is helplessness. A poison worse than fear.

* * *

He's asked Raymond many times to recount the story of their miraculous escape from an airport hangar in Switzerland. His memory of that morning has remained an image of Van Gogh art; stuck in fantastical, unbelievable strokes of chaos and pain. It's vibrant and dull, and Raymond shortened the dire occurrence to the likes of an adventure; composed and laced in poetry and speeches akin to fairy tales.

Dembe only remembers Raymond telling him not to give in and then waking up to the sound of wind. The very man, in his usual bedside manner, was seated in a chair. Glasses on. Reading aloud for the first time since Dembe rejoined him after graduation. The words flow like waves; a cadence that makes him feel as though he is rocking gently.

"These beauteous forms, through a long absence, have not been to me as is a landscape to a blind man's eye; But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din of towns and cities, I have owed to them," Dembe holds his breath as Raymond pauses, an odd sound lifting the comfort from him as though all the warmth had suddenly vacated the room despite the flush of his skin. "In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;" Another, deliberate pause. A deep breath. "Are you lucid?"

There's the dull  _snap_  of the book being shut, and the distinct sound of his glasses against the hardcover. Dembe peels his eyes open and gives Raymond a thoughtful expression.

"Yes." The room is awash with daylight, and the sound of the wind from before dies away with a sigh; its source an open window to his left. "Wordsworth does you no favors." Something serious and heavy passes between them, and he watches Raymond's mouth tick. His jaw is in need of a shave. His face is pale.

"Puts me to sleep." A deflection. A ruse. It seems half-hearted. These two men have shared their lives with each other. There are few things Raymond can lie to him about successfully.

"And tears on your face." It is as though the room has stilled for this moment. It would be easy to pretend that they are two wayfaring brothers; criminals only in sport and not necessity. But a shiver races through him, and the aching sensation of  _sickness_  assaults his muscles. The dull throbbing settles in his head, and he closes his eyes. "Tell me."

The sound of Raymond shifting in his seat, the slight weight of the book being set on the bed, and the all-encompassing draw of air into lungs delays the answer. Dembe is suddenly apprehensive of what will come out of the man's mouth, but he can't worry long enough to become truly nervous because the answer is given; quick and simple without much detail or fanfare.

"The explosion took you. We missed some of the shrapnel. Infection." There's a hand in his own now. A peace steals over him. "But you pulled through." There is no telling of the amount of time or where they were. The air was crisp and clean. The freshest scent he's experienced in a long time. As though reading his thoughts, Raymond gives his hand a squeeze and reassures him, "We're incredibly safe up here."

Up here. In the wind with a room that that is touched by a most innocent light. Dembe opens his eyes again, tries to still the race of his thoughts and the questions he wants answered, and looks to Raymond's tired face with just the barest hint of a smile. Wordsworth.  _Indulge him._  Something in him begs him to comfort the man that seems far older than he is. Dembe does not doubt that he has had a constant watcher beside him.

To keep him safe.

To say thank you by way of lines in a book.

"Are the skies quiet?"  _Give him that, at least._  Give him quiet skies to picture and yearn. Raymond grimaces.

"Always."

* * *

He has to get out of this chair. There is always a chink in the armor. Exploit it. But there are voices beyond the door, now. Urgent voices.

Yelling.

He knows the inflection of that voice, and his calm vanishes.

Knows the careful rumble of the softer one he thinks he hears. It's so muffled beyond the door. So careful and strained. His hope is a feather trapped in a cruel wind; up and down and up and down. He strains against the chair as if sheer willpower might free him. A foolish and naive habit he'd discarded until this moment.

Loathes, on principle, the voice that renews its shouting.

Is mostly indifferent to the one that defends in response but he is growing on him.

And just when he is about to yell for her, when he is about to make his captivity known, Elizabeth Keen barges through his door and says his name.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might do Liz's POV next. Still working on it. Forgot to update on here. The poem that Red is reading is an excerpt from William Wordsworth's, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Dembe also references it with the 'quiet skies' comment, if you were curious. :) As always, thanks for reading!


	7. Quiet Skies pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I did say I would add to this when it fancied me, haha. And I also found an unfinished chapter of it in the bowels of my saved documents so...here it is! A continuation of last chapter.

She was crouched on the floor beside the bed. Gun in hand. Eyes probing the dark. Heart in her throat. It took her a moment between listening and catching her breath to realize why she was in this position in the first place.

Pounding at her door.  
Demanding.

The focused intake of breath that passed through her lips sounded too startled for her liking but everything else was as it should be. She'd been practicing this move religiously. Set an alarm on her phone. Rolled from her side of the bed into a crouch when it went off. Gun beside the bed. Practiced swiping it smoothly after she mastered the position she would take for cover. Practiced deliberate breathing techniques to lower her heart rate. Made sure to duck lower beside the bed as to shield the top of her skull. Waited for the day when she could do it without thinking too much.

Over and over and over again.  
An act of someone that wants to continue surviving and is paranoid she won't.

Tonight was the night that no phone alarm would have to drag her from sleep. And she had been more than prepared for it. Ears straining, Liz cautiously makes her way along the wall. Her eyes dart to her hotel window and after a second of watching the shades, the pounding on her door is back.

Gun leading the way, she trails off to the right down the hall, passes the bathroom door she closed before bed, and puts her eye up to the peep hole. Her breathing hitches. She flicks the safety of her gun back into place and reaches for the latch above the knob.

When she swings the door open, Red practically falls over the threshold. The two of them careen into the wall behind her, and she nearly drops her gun. Her hands have gone around his middle in order to catch him, but he reacts like he's been shocked. Teeth bared in front of her. Air hissed between them. And before she can say anything more than his name, he's moving; lurching away from her and the wall with a barely suppressed grunt, and makes a beeline through the dark for the room beyond the hallway.

"Red, what-hey." She's snagged his attention but it's a minute movement; a jerk of his head so that the side of his face can be seen in the wan light filtering in around the blinds of her window. He seems to sway for a moment in the dark, and it takes her only a handful of seconds to secure her door and walk briskly to his side. He bends then, searching through her room's mini-fridge. There's the tinkling of glass and a sharp, impatient sigh when he drops one of them onto the floor. Liz has moved towards the light beside her bed and she's just about to turn it on when he grumbles,

"No lights, Lizzie." He grunts as he eases himself to perch on the end of the bed. "Please."

"What's going on?"

"You need to get ahold of Ressler." That tinkling sound is back and she's trying to temper her frustration as she listens to him unscrew what he's grabbed from the mini-fridge. "Tell him-" his shadow moves and he throws one back. "Ah-tell him to get over here." She grabs her cellphone off the night stand and texts Ressler about Red's impromptu visit. Out of the corner of her eye, outside the glare of her phone's screen, she sees Red bent at an odd angle; his head bowed, canted to the side, and a hand pulling his jacket away. It's the slight intake of air that makes her squint through the dark towards him; her eyes roving over him with concern.

"You're hurt." The words seem to fall out of her mouth and hit the floor; heavy and ready for a deflection.

"Seems Tom isn't as dead as I thought." Half of his smirk is visible to her; the other half of his face dramatically cast in darkness. She's frozen. A dozen lies sit on the tip of her tongue and all she can do is look at him with as much stoicism as she can muster. Go to his side or stand resolute? It didn't matter. He was suddenly a pariah; dangerous and injured and she didn't know what to do with him.

"I couldn't tell you." Not that she didn't know how. Not when a good time would have been. Not that he was useful and helped get them the necessary lead to the meet with Berlin in order to save Red's life. Not how scared and confused she'd been after Meera's death, Cooper's dire-straights, and the inevitability of Red's abduction.

Should have.  
Didn't.  
Couldn't.  
 _Plain, but not so simple._  
The dull sound of her phone vibrating with Ressler's reply shakes away whatever Red was going to say back to her. She steps towards the lamp by the side of her bed.

"Ressler's on his way over with Samar. I'm gonna turn the light on. I need to check you ov-" Out of the dark, Red grasps her wrist, holding her fast. She looks down at his hand; startled by the grip and uncomfortable with how it bunches the skin around her scar.

"You could have." Thank God it's more dark than light in here. The pinched way his voice meshes with the shadows and the emotional turmoil that makes his eyes glint in the meager light of her phone is almost too much at this proximity. Lines she can't normally see are afforded to her in the most awful of ways. Like he's bone white and someone has shoved soot in them. He's worse for wear this close. Stressed. A kind of feral desperation that clouds her judgement and makes her eyes settle on his own. Without him saying so, she senses that there is something horrible bothering him beneath his desire for her to trust him and the pain evident in his stare.

"I didn't know how." He loosens his grip as her whisper carries on and on between them; a never-ending loop of guilt and questioning, suspicion and trust. _Around and around we go._ She manages to slip out of his grasp in order to turn the light on.

When she turns back to him, both squinting as their eyes adjust, she sees how his suit is covered in dust and other debris, and that there's blood peeking out behind the edge of his jacket and vest. The shallow rise and fall of his chest as he takes care to breathe without moving too much of his abdomen alarms her. There's bruising on his jaw, a bloodied brow. He's not too pale, but there's a pull at the corners of his eyes and mouth that disturbs the confidence she has in his ability to appear untouchable. Even with the mess that Berlin had turned out to be, Lizzie still had this lens through which she deemed him indestructible. It helped her sleep at night.

_The things we tell ourselves._

"Let's try to get a little bit of a handle on," She makes a sweeping gesture towards him before she settles her hands on her hips. " _This_ before they get here."

The hotel room isn't spacious. One queen-size bed. A bathroom. Two lounge chairs. A TV. A last minute room for someone on a last minute trip. She had decided to switch motels earlier that week, but found the locks on her new residence didn't add up to her need for a secure door, so she booked a hotel room for the week. Nervous and uneasy. It was like before when she felt someone was watching her and it ended up being Ezra, one of Red's people. It was a little comforting to know, now that Tom was apparently back in the swing of things, that her intuition was as honed as ever.

She darts into the bathroom, snags the traveling kit from beside the sink, as well as a towel, and returns to him in a flash. He's drawn his jacket and vest back again and is trying to peek at the wound a little better now that the light is on.

She sets the supplies next to him on the bed and crouches down to get a better look at what they're dealing with. For a moment, she watches his tentative ministrations; how his bloodied fingers inspect the tender area, how he stops breathing when he does so, how intent he seems upon doing it himself. He was a mess, and it stands that it was Tom that did this to him. He moves to untuck his shirt, and the fabric pulls a little faster than he would have liked. When a helpless sound hisses through his teeth, she slowly reaches for his wrist.

"Stop that." He lets her draw his hand away and she's afforded the first real glimpse of what's been done to him. It's bloody and painful-looking, but what could've been a pretty nasty gut shot, turns out to be more of a shot meant to clip him than do any real damage. She knows that they are both aware that Tom could have killed him if he wanted. _So why didn't he?_ She lifts the edges of his vest and jacket away from his shirt to peer around the side of him, finds that the bullet seems to only have grazed him, and gives him a look that mirrors the relief she feels.

"Small mercies," he says and she rises to help him as he stiffly removes his suit jacket and places it on the bed beside him.

"You're sure it was Tom?" She drags the chair from the foot of her bed and shoves it close enough that she can sit and examine him without unnecessary difficulty. The uneasy silence that fits into the breaths he always takes before telling her the truth is louder and more irritating this time. She's impatient. And she's already decided she isn't going anywhere. What could he possibly have to say that would make him hesitate? She knows he wouldn't lie, at least not outright. Part of her really didn't want it to be Tom, but she doesn't think he's mistaken. There would be no reason for him to jump to that conclusion of he wasn't sure.

"And Gina," he gets the assassin's name out around a grunt of discomfort as she lifts the bottom of his shirt up for him to hold. She winces, though whether at the mention of Gina or the way the fabric peels unkindly away from Red's skin, she isn't sure. There's some kind of crap all in his wound and she's suddenly exhausted by the idea of causing him more pain. She grabs the towel and some packages of gauze from her kit.

"Lie back." He blinks at her with a measured expression that turns a shade more sorrowful and angrier than she expected. "What?"

"Tom has-" A knock that's nearly simultaneous with Ressler's voice swallows whatever Red was going to say, and she takes one last look at him before going to her door and opening it up for her partners. She ushers them in with small, terse greetings, and closes the door again once they're in. After flipping all the locks, she turns to find Red listing to one side again and Samar taking up the position on the chair she'd just vacated.

"What happened?" Level, with just a note of concern, she inspects the wound with a tired, but amused, Reddington staring down at her.

"Tom happened." Both Samar and Ressler turn when Liz answers for him, having stopped just beside the bathroom door; inches into the shelter of the shadow cast out from the corner of the wall.

"Tom?" Ressler looks between Red and his partner with a deepening frown upon his face. "He's alive? How the hell did he get to _you_ of all people?"

"Apparently," Red's breath hitches when Samar resumes the task Liz had tried to complete before their arrival. As she continues, the tightness in his voice remains, and somehow adds a level of tension that had been absent from the room. "He's reconnected with an _old friend_." While the crocodile smile is not lost in Red's expression, it's interrupted by a wince that twitches it's way across the criminal's features. He looks down, a bit too sharply, as Samar begins cleaning his wound.

"Don't look at me. I'm not the one who put a clotting agent in my bullet wound." Reddington scowls at the derisive tone in the Mossad Agent's voice. His jaw clenches and his eyes stray closed. Liz and Ressler exchange glances before Liz moves away from the wall and towards Red; noting the slight sheen on his forehead and the way the color drains from his face.

" _I_ didn't." He manages to get the two words out and then Liz has stopped Samar with a gentle hand to her shoulder.

"Let's make him lie back first." She takes Red by the arm but he holds fast, his head bowed but listing slightly towards her.

"There's no time for all of this." His face bunches into a wince and he almost places a hand protectively over his side. His attention catches on Ressler who has moved to stand beside Samar, worry evident on his face. "Tom and Gina have Dembe."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so I'm still chipping away and apparently this is going to be a three part event haha hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for being patient on my other stories as I get through them. Expect the next part soon!


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